Remington's story

Details

Written by Tammy McAuley

Published: 15 October 2015

We’ve posted stories about how your donations make such a difference in the day-to-day lives of the ferals & strays that come to us with injuries and illness. Almost daily I make choices about what care, what extent of care we can provide. Our latest is Remington. We’ve had Remington in foster for a couple months. He came from a colony that is clearly inbred and they have health issues. Remington had upper respiratory symptoms that required successive antibiotics and only keeping him on a maintenance dose of clindamycin kept the URI at bay, while a rattling sound became more and more evident in his breathing. It seemed likely that there was a growth or polyp causing the rattle. His visit to Veterinary Specialty Center in Buffalo Grove resulted in a clear diagnosis. They are wonderful professionals, all in one location and worth the trip.

It is definitely a nasopharyngeal polyp. They could feel it for themselves. There were two options, go in and yank it out - often don't get the whole root and the polyp is back in a year or two (think the movie Total Recall where they grab that ball out of the nose - Ughhhh!) and still need the surgery. Or surgery now, where they go in thru the ear and get the whole polyp, sure for certain. We are definitely doing the second option as we want Remington to have the longest, most uncomplicated life possible. This will not be cheap, while we get a Rescue discount, the quote is for over $3,200. That would completely wipe out our fundraiser, IF we achieve our goal of $3,000.

There is no one else to help Remington but you. Through your donations to "As If They Were Our Own", he will get this surgery and life for Remington will improve almost immediately and long into his future.

Please help us, help them!

Numbers

It’s all about the numbers. Numbers are how we evaluate, benchmark progress, compare to others.

When we first started Feral Fixers, I was convinced that 3,000 spay/neuters was the goal. Then we achieved 5,000 and I was certain the end was in sight. By the end of October we will surpass 8,200 spay/neuters. M A Y B E, when we pass 10,000 things will slow down?

If you follow us on Facebook, we recently encountered a colony of 70+ cats. Yes, there were multiple businesses involved, but it was essentially one colony. Largest situation I had ever encountered other than a hoarder that had over 100. The hoarder was easier in one way – you knew when you had the last cat – you had opened ever door, cupboard, looked in every duct, it was cat-free. Outside colonies – individuals may only show up occasionally depending on many variables but still have impact on the colony, that one teenage kitten might wander off and start production in the spring all over again. We know that once we have a location on our radar, its there forever. We may finally find the source of those new cats that have shown up in a 6 block area consistently, having never known the origin before. This happened two weeks ago when we learned of a garage with 15+ cats living inside, then the location across the street from it that had more than a dozen, and so on, resulting in at least 40 cats that needed to be TNR’d.

We are averaging 1,000 spay/neuters a year and bringing approximately 400 kittens and friendlies inside each year. Everyone in TNR asks, “what if we hadn’t been doing this – how much euthanization would be going on?” A tremendous number of cats and kittens would be euthanized each year, each month, each week, if we were not doing TNR.